Alana's Dharma Blog

I was at the Wat and a friend was talking with Mae Yo about an issue of hers: She had asked someone to go to the store and pick-up a case of Coke, they came home with Pepsi.  Over and over she asked them to go and make and exchange and she grew more and more frustrated when they didn’t. The thing is, she already knew her wrong view: when someone fucks something up, they should fix it. She already knew she was the one suffering. But still the problem wasn’t fixed –so what are us practitioners supposed to do when we know we have set a condition, but it just seems so real and right?

A few minutes before Mae Yo had pointed to a stack of papers and pens and other stuff on the table — a bunch of stuff I said  looked like mess– and Mae Yo told us the goal was to be neutral about it. We should see it as an impermanent pile of things, not a mess per se. Or, at least, if it is a mess, it is only one in conventional terms, it is something we should not be bothered by.

But seriously, it still looked like a mess to me, and messes bother me. How am I supposed to come to neutral? I know it is my condition of what is mess and what is clean, I know these conditions will come and bite me in the ass, They already had, as I was uncomfortable sitting there and staring at the mess. But looking at that friggen pile, I was 100% sure it was a mess!!!

Neecha pointed out that it is really just my memory (3) of past object piles informing my imagination (4) to think of it as a mess. And, my memory and imagination have been wrong so many times before. Mae Yo suggested I zoom-out, just looking at mess may not be enough, maybe I should consider concepts of cleanliness, safety, and my experiences with those to consider their performance. But to be completely honest, I left that conversation thinking me and my definition of mess were a totally hopeless mess…

Fast forward a few weeks: I had been to a concert with one of my favorite Jazz singers, Paula West, and it had sparked some contemplations about what is familiar  being what is preferable to me (we will look at this in the next blog). Older songs I had heard before I liked, newer ones I tended to judge based on my experience with her old music.

But it dawned on me the songs are really just a jumble of notes and lyrics (just like a mess is just a jumble of objects). I see them as enjoyable, or not, based on my own familiarity (memory–#3).  I then use my imagination (#4), drawing parallels to other music I like, the way her new songs sound like old favorites, to create new memories, new songs that I can like and use to judge future music.

Suddenly it just seemed kind of silly that I could think some note combos are absolutely great (clean) and others are absolutely bad (messy), particularly when my yard stick is my own creation, based on my own past experiences,  and I’m continually manipulating the notches on the yardstick as I interpret new experiences and imagine ways they impact the future.

And here it is –I think I may sorta kinda understand what Mae Yo was trying to say about the process by which I can bring my emotions to neutral: When I love/hate something, it is my emotions, my feelings, my vedana (that would be the second aggregate) that is responding to the imagination (#4) of what it means which is based off my past memories (#3). The path is is manipulate my own imagination (#4)– by assessing the evidence in the world, paying attention to the 2 sides of everything, impermanence and the suffering– so that my mind overwrites my old memories #3 with new ones that are more accurate and aligned with the truth (impermanence). With new memories, I will have new beliefs, new imaginations, that can, ultimately change my emotional responses (Vedana) of love/hate and bring my to neutral.

 

Why Do I do all this?

It is so hard to peel back these tendencies and beliefs and find the why. Still, I think I have found at least a few reasons that play out in my tendency to imagine and seek “zones of comfort”, as well as in so many other wrong views:

One: As I have already reflected in past entries, my self seeks safety. It creates narratives and interprets the “data” of my experiences in order to tell me a story that I am safe, that I can be safe, that if I do the right things or play by the right rules to be safe, I will be. I plan a Japan trip because I need to believe there to be someplace /space in this world exempt from the daily sufferings, somewhere worth it, somewhere fun and exciting and new, somewhere I can replay my positive experiences — some place, some zone,  where I am safe and comfortable. With the effort of planning, the effort of going, I can find it. And when I do find it, or narrate to myself that I have found it, it reinforces my sense of self as someone who deserves the happiness, who deserves the safety that I have found. I play into the lie loop #3 from the last blog , self creates self- fulfilling prophecies.

Two: I do it to achieve other ends that I think are important (often incidentally for my safety). This is especially true of travel, because I see it as a way to spend time with Eric and therefore strengthen our relationship (which I rely on for a sense of emotional and financial safety). So even if I see the pain in setting-it up, of losing it, I suppress the pain in order to muscle through and do what I think needs to be done to achieve my aim.

Three: I think I construct this imaginary line of crappy here and awesome over there (but achievable there, not far off there), to make life and all my struggles in it seem worth it. I catch myself rationalizing weird things to this end — just the other day I was thinking even though having our life and home in this expensive city, with Eric’s crazy job and my boring one are so hard, I wouldn’t want to go back to Houston or have less house, less money, different job because I don’t want to go back to my old types of suffering. I feel like at least my new suffering is progress. If I go back to the old, it proves that all the struggle in between was for nothing.

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Interjection from present day Alana: Back when I wrote this homework I didn’t want to go back to Houston. But now I do want to go from NY back to San Fran. I see that it is not just that I don’t want to ‘go back’ to old sufferings — it is not about ‘progress’– it is that I prefer certain Alana selfs, and that self’s particular type of suffering (a suffering that in fact helps define that version of myself). Sure I had SF self suffering — the suffering to be a good attentive wife to a husband who works too much, the suffering of a stable job that bored me, the suffering of needing to preserve wealth and beauty. But that suffering came with being a certain Alana — good wife, smart employee, wealthy and pretty, and capable of managing my active, slightly stressful life like a good mature adult. NY Alana suffers as a hater, as a bad wife who is dragging down her husband’s career by being so emotionally unstable, as a bad Buddhist who can’t just be all fucking zen about the situation. I much prefer SF Alana, and the sufferings that shape her, show her ‘true’ colors as a steady suffering saint than the eratic, harmful, crazy-ass NY Alana. Obviously, this brings me right back to the prelude for this blog, can there be 2 diametrically opposed Alanas I can pick from? And a new topic for further future contemplation: Not only does my sense of self create my suffering, but I then take my suffering and interpret it in ways that further support my sense of self. Anyway…back to the blog at hand…

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It’s like I’m not yet ready to give-up on the world –in part because I really want there to be fields of frolicking unicorns and rainbows just waiting for me to find them. I still think I have control to find them and if I can’t exactly “will it” there are things I can do to “deserve it” (I know ironically that I am likely the one who determines what this is too, my own lawmaker and  judge). But also because it’s so hard to just call so much effort a sunk cost–like all my own suffering is money I spent gambling and I just can’t quit because I am already in so deep.

Anyway, I think this was a very long, 4-part blog, to say I know I have a problem. A problem with my view and a problem that I suffer. Now I need to gather enough evidence to see the truth,  sukka’s rightful owner is dukka. If I make the problem of suffering my number one priority, if I can stop quests for ‘zones of comfort’ and focus on final escape, maybe I can solve the problem with my view along the way…

But, the solution will really only come with gathering evidence, looking at my life, and seeing how the suffering pans-out.

Dear Reader — this blog is a direct continuation of the last entry, Wrong Views on Suffering and Happiness —What, How, the Lie and Why Part 1 and Part 2 — if you have not yet read that post yet please head back there and read it before you continue.

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The Lie: The problem is that my 3s and 4s (memory and imagination) –my self — is a liar. I know this because I have watched and gathered so much evidence of it. My favorite story though is about the way I always viewed my Mom and Dad. Mom was evil, Dad a saint. Every story I remembered from my childhood supported this narrative, the way I interpreted, the things I chose to remember–it all served to strengthen my resolve that my parents were flat characters, they were one particular way. It was only after I began contemplating gratitude for my Mom that I remembered times she was good and my Dad was a dick. Stories where she cared for me, where she supported me, where she made me feel happy and loved. It makes me see that there are a few particular ways in which the lie unfolds:

1) I am always the reference point –I just caught this one as I was writing. I read what I thought was good behavior from my Mom and its all about me. She cared for me, she made me smile. I was in a review with my new employee today along with my supervisor. We were both giving her feedback of the positive qualities we think she brings to the job and all mine were about the things that make my life easier. All my boss’ where about the things that make her life easier. So what exactly are the good qualities of my employee? If my priorities change what happens to my sense of her goodness? If I am the reference point, and I continually change, then how can there be an absolute good, a safe zone? Worse, it means that as my expectations change, as they grow –my employee’s virtues, the  things Mom does to make me smile, the ‘zones’ I think are happy — all these things will need to grow too in order to adapt to a changing standard.

2) My 3s (memory) and 4s (imagination) have an agenda — when I look at the way I  construed my Mom and Dad, I see the way I kept gathering evidence to “prove” the point I already “knew” –Mom was bad and Dad was good. Information that went contrary to this I sorta just forgot about, or I ignored it as an outlier. I do this so often. I think of the guys that park my car at work very fondly. I think they are efficient, they are always on time. But sometimes they are not, so I give them a pass –I think they are having a bad day, its a one off, but I “forget about it” and don’t let it erode my sense of their goodness.

 

3) My 3s and 4s self confirm/self fulfill prophecies — this is similar to #2 above. But its worth a separate note because its such an active process. Here is how I see it working: I associate being on a trip with being relaxed, therefor on a trip I tend not to do things that stress me out like checking email or making appointments. It is like, in my mind, the trip gives me permission not to worry or do worrisome things and, in turn, I record to memory that trips are stress-free times.

4) The only way my 4s (imagination) are able to interpret and value my experiences is relatively. In Japan we stayed at a disgusting hotel one night. The bathroom was moldy, the bed hurt, the heater was broken. We couldn’t even make it all night (it was not up to our standard, not what we were used to) so we went and found another place. The second place was so much better than the first we felt such relief and slept with ease. Eric and I remember the time there fondly. But in truth the 2nd place wasn’t nearly as nice as many places we often stay at and the first was way less bad than places we deemed acceptable in the past (you should have seen some of the hotels in Morocco when we were broke grad students). When we moved on to the next hotel our affection for the second place faded  a little because the new place was nicer. This I guess gets back to the suffering, which is there is no way to ever hit a zone of comfort and stay there because not only will it change, and I will change, just having it as a new point of relative reference means that I will go reinterpreting it as soon as a new experience comes along. So the big question…WHY DO I DO THIS ALL?